I am trying to run my first home server using fedora and I have run into a problem. My ntfs partitions write very slow. Reading speed is just fine but both my internal and external drives that have ntfs have write speeds around 5 MiB/sec, so that rules out usb problems.

This is my first time trying to use linux as something other than desktop and its working great so far, I just need to get this write speed issue resolved.

Also converting them to ex2/3 is not really an option because one drive runs windows and another is external and I feel having a ex2/3 formatted drive is kinda useless if I need to quickly plug it into another computer. Is there some tweak I can do to get the write speed up to snuff or is this just a drawback to ntfs-3g?

That was the first page I checked, also I compiled and installed the newest version

In future, please state such things up front: what you have already tried, where you have already looked for answers, etc., etc., etc., so that those of us who respond can give helpful suggestions.

If you have already read that page, then I think you already have the answer: it is the "nature of the beast". How are you determining the write speed, and why do you think that it is slower than expected?

In future, please state such things up front: what you have already tried, where you have already looked for answers, etc., etc., etc., so that those of us who respond can give helpful suggestions.

If you have already read that page, then I think you already have the answer: it is the "nature of the beast". How are you determining the write speed, and why do you think that it is slower than expected?

Regards,
V

When I boot into windows the same drive (USB 2.0) has no problems writing at 20 MiB/sec and it have it drop to 5 MiB/sec is VERY noticeable. I used a stopwatch to time how long it took to send a 700mb ISO.

I am sorry I didn't write what I already tried, but I assumed there may be some setting I could put in /etc/fstab that might fix it. I was hoping this was a sorta common configuration problem that I somehow goofed on.

I did also test an internal drive that is running NTFS (its write speed was around the same. 5 MiB/sec to an internal drive you know something is wrong.) so I assume its nothing to do with the USB drivers/hardware and the fault lies in NTFS-3g. Write speed is just fine and dandy with the native file system....

Your fstab looks fine to me (but make sure that there's a space between those two zeros at the end of the line for sda1). You could try mount option noatime (then remount), but I doubt that it will help. I know of no additional mount settings that might affect speed there, however, you can always read "man fstab" and "man mount". Also, I checked my ntfs-3g packages, and I find no config files that I have altered, so I know of no settings there that might help. BTW, FireWing1's fwfstab is a great GUI utility to manipulate fstab if you don't already have it (yum install fwfstab). It includes handy mount/unmount buttons.

The info on that link and attached links suggests that your write performance may in fact be lower than expected, but it also clearly says that there can be many factors contributing to this. One thing it suggests is a defrag of the ntfs drive. There are several other suggestions as well. Be aware also that, due to the switch to libata to access HDDs as SCSI devices, hdparm and DMA are currently broken. The net result is lower I/O performance overall. Most people don't seem to even notice. I have looked into this, but it appears that there is no solution in sight. I am certainly no expert on this stuff however, so if someone else knows more, I too would like to know....

Your fstab looks fine to me (but make sure that there's a space between those two zeros at the end of the line for sda1). You could try mount option noatime (then remount), but I doubt that it will help. I know of no additional mount settings that might affect speed there, however, you can always read "man fstab" and "man mount". Also, I checked my ntfs-3g packages, and I find no config files that I have altered, so I know of no settings there that might help. BTW, FireWing1's fwfstab is a great GUI utility to manipulate fstab if you don't already have it (yum install fwfstab). It includes handy mount/unmount buttons.

The info on that link and attached links suggests that your write performance may in fact be lower than expected, but it also clearly says that there can be many factors contributing to this. One thing it suggests is a defrag of the ntfs drive. There are several other suggestions as well. Be aware also that, due to the switch to libata to access HDDs as SCSI devices, hdparm and DMA are currently broken. The net result is lower I/O performance overall. Most people don't seem to even notice. I have looked into this, but it appears that there is no solution in sight. I am certainly no expert on this stuff however, so if someone else knows more, I too would like to know....

Regards,
V

thanks for the help. I found how to benchmark it. This is with the newest stable version of NTFS-3g check it out.

Ah, yes! I forgot about those tests...IIRC, it says to do them several times back-to-back and average the results, and you can do "-tT" to get both cached/uncached reads. Unfortunately, I have no NTFS-only HDDs to compare, and those tests are for the entire disk, not per partition.

Those results do look quite low when compared to native ext3 HDD times. Perhaps with the results of a few more tests to compare.... What flavor of Fedora are you running, BTW?

V

EDIT: And based on the info in that link, 70% CPU use sounds fairly high....

Ah, yes! I forgot about those tests...IIRC, it says to do them several times back-to-back and average the results, and you can do "-tT" to get both cached/uncached reads. Unfortunately, I have no NTFS-only HDDs to compare, and those tests are for the entire disk, not per partition.

Those results do look quite low when compared to native ext3 HDD times. Perhaps with the results of a few more tests to compare.... What flavor of Fedora are you running, BTW?

V

EDIT: And based on the info in that link, 70% CPU use sounds fairly high....

I am running
#uname -r
2.6.24.3-12.fc8

Here is the version of ntfs-3g I am running
ntfs-3g-1.2129-1.EL4

I know its not a fc8 package but I was just trying it out and it performs the same. As I said before this drive can do 20 MiB/sec + read/write in windows. I would be happy to get around 12.

Here is the usb drive. I am super confused at these results. Is there a way to test write speed? I just know over ftp or samba the ntfs drives can only go at 6 MiB/sec when a non ntfs drive can max out the 100mbit ethernet connection.

Quite frankly, I'm a little confused now, too. Compared to my tests, your results don't look all that bad. sda has one NTFS partition, and shares the rest LVM with sdb. As you can see, sdb is quite a bit faster overall - or so it would seem:

Quite frankly, I'm a little confused now, too. Compared to my tests, your results don't look all that bad. sda has one NTFS partition, and shares the rest LVM with sdb. As you can see, sdb is quite a bit faster overall - or so it would seem:

I kow of no write tests offhand. Will keep an eye out. Hopefully someone with more knowledge/experience steps in....

Regards,
V

Yeah write speed is the real problem. read speed seems to be just fine.